Innovating teacher feedback with writing activities aimed at raising secondary school students’ awareness of collocation errors

Barry Lee Reynolds,Mark Feng Teng

doi:10.14746/ssllt.2021.11.3.6

Barry Lee Reynolds, Mark Feng Teng

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt.2021.11.3.6

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Abstract

The study examined the types of written corrective feedback given by second language writing teachers on Taiwanese secondary school students’ collocation errors. First, the written corrective feedback that teachers provided on learners’ word choice errors was examined to uncover the types of feedback provided. Then, analysis focused on verb–noun collocations to draw attention to how students had been receiving different types of written corrective feedback from teachers on a single collocation error type. Results showed that some sentences tagged as including word choice errors only contained rule-based errors. Furthermore, for verb-noun collocation errors, teachers chose to provide indirect and direct feedback almost equally at the expense of metalinguistic feedback. Based on the results, we suggested options for second language writing teachers when providing feedback on word choice errors.

Highlights

The potential of written corrective feedback for second language (L2) writing improvement has long been acknowledged (e.g., Ferris, 2002; Hyland & Hyland, 2006; Sarré et al, 2019)
As few useful guidelines are available for English language teaching (ELT) practitioners in providing written corrective feedback for collocation errors found in L2 learners’ writing, this study aimed to examine teachers’ written corrective feedback extracted from the English Taiwan Learner Corpus (ETLC) and provide L2 writing teachers with advice for giving accurate, complete, and appropriate feedback
There could have been more word-choice errors made by the students, this study focused only on the feedback that L2 writing teachers provided for word-choice errors

Summary

Introduction

The potential of written corrective feedback for second language (L2) writing improvement has long been acknowledged (e.g., Ferris, 2002; Hyland & Hyland, 2006; Sarré et al, 2019). The elements and characteristics of teacher feedback determine its quality and effect on students’ English writing. Another thorny issue is whether teachers are even equipped with the knowledge necessary to provide corrective feedback: They may unknowingly mislabel one error type for another and thereby misinform and misdirect students’ attention. While these and other issues are being debated regarding teacher feedback on student writing, few experts would suggest teachers not to provide any type of feedback on student writing. Students expect teachers to provide feedback on their written errors produced when writing in their L2s (Ferris & Roberts, 2001). Suggestions from researchers as well as the expectations of L2 writing students provide the rationale for the current investigation of teacher feedback practices

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